Urban sprawl is not a new phenomenon, and the battle between environmentalists and developers is well-known. But perhaps the issue is not that the land is being utterly stripped of life and replaced by cookie cutter houses or factories, which has been a controversy for decades. Perhaps the fighting has exposed a deeper problem: the American acceptance of a false outside, seen through lawns that mimic interiors. People often perceive that any green space is nature. As Michael Ventura says, Americ...

Landscape and the enlightenment It is interesting to see how the landscape can be physically altered just because of the cultural revolution know as the Enlightenment. While many European countries underwent major transformations during the Renaissance period of the 13th to 17th centuries, it had a specific impact on each nation politically, cultural, and environmentally. During this age of enlightenment, two countries in particular, Italy and France, had undergone drastic changes which can be v...

DB: Settlement of the Western Frontier During the years between 1840 and 1890, the land west of the Mississippi River experienced a wild and sporadic growth. The natural environment contributed greatly to this growth spurt and helped shape the development of the trans-Mississippi west. The natural environment dictated and facilitated the development of the west by way of determining who settled where, how the people survived, why people wanted to settle, and whether they were successful or not. ...

Jeremy Rifkin is an immensely persuasive writer and a fine synthesizer of cutting-edge ideas. Over the years he's taken on touchy subjects like the beef industry, energy consumption, green economics, and the future of work. As the president and founder of the Foundation on Economic Trends, he's also been active in shaping public policy on a variety of ecological and technological issues. In this book, he explores how the last five centuries of human history have shaped our relationship to the na...

Nature is not pure. It has its own inconsistencies. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck clearly expresses that Nature and Man are one. The humans in the novel are different and each contributes differently to the conflict. Some humans contribute in creating the conflict while others contribute to the solution. Nature is the same way. It is not always dependable, yet many people put all of their faith into it. Nature can create and destroy all in one breath. In the beginning of the novel, the l...

Just War Theories in the West Since the beginning of time, strong nations have taken over weaker ones without any consideration for the indigenous people of those lands. Some claim that because many of these peoples are inferior intellectually and / or physically to the conquerors, than by nature they are slaves and, as stated by Aristotle, "it is better for them as inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master (Aristotle, Vitoria 239)". However, natural law claims that all men are eq...

Imperialism DB Throughout American History the U.S. has sought to expand its boundaries. This need increased greatly during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century with the start of the industrial revolution. This Expansion was a big departure from earlier attempts to expand the boundaries of the U.S. The needed for Natural resources forced the U. S to look for places that could supply them with the natural resources they needed and markets where they could sell their goods in. T...

Outline the main controversies involved in the desertification debate. Despite the fact that desertification is not a new concept, having occurred for millennia (Grainger, 1990) or since the Neolithic (Spooner, 1985), it has only in the last three or four decades been thrust into the limelight. It was conceptualized as a serious problem for the first time in the 1970's, upon the recognition of the varying patterns of spatial desert conditions, especially in the Sahel, where such changes coincide...

Does wilderness have intrinsic value To begin analyzing the pro side of this issue we need to first define the word wilderness, and then define the word intrinsic. Authors, philosophers, and preservationists have long struggled to define wilderness. For some, it is a concept, a state of mind, or an opportunity. For many, wilderness is best described as a place where nature and its forces work undisturbed by human activities. Wilderness areas are generally larger than 5000 acres and have retained...

Everyone in today's world is worried about the environment. There are so many differences in opinion about what to save, what to bulldoze and what animals are becoming endangered. So how can we save ourselves from the fiery feuds and uprisings regarding this subject? Well, for starters, if there's no environment to live in, people won't have a whole heck of a lot to complain about or attempt to save. This is why it's my belief that we should simply bulldoze everything. Humans have been known to ...

Soaring at majestically 4 100 m above sea level in the North Borneo land called ' Land below the Wind' in the state of Sabah (Malaysia), Mount Kinabalu has long been regarded as the precious scientific gem. Although not the tallest peak in the South East Asian Countries but in term of attraction and splendid display of nature at work it has attracted more and more climbers each year from all over the world. People came here not only to test their stamina of conquering the peak or leisure sightse...

The Effects of Representations of Spaces How do representations of space affect our relationship to a place? To answer this question, we should perhaps ask ourselves an equally important question: how can we probe nature to learn about it without changing it. By analyzing this question using six main representational themes - cartographic, political, Cartesian perspectivalism, optical, transcendental, and biological - we will answer the original question. I believe that there are no representati...